About a month ago we had people over for dinner and Ev, as I have said, likes to show off a little (okay, a lot) in the kitchen. This particular dish was a bit of a risk, so we had a trial run a few days earlier to 1. Make sure it was tasty and 2. To make sure we didn’t poison ourselves.

I say that we didn’t want to poison ourselves because the way that the fish in ceviche is cooked is so foreign to us that we were a little worried, yet intrigued. No heat is applied at all, yet it is not sashimi. It is soaked in a bowl of lime juice for 30 minutes, which does all the “cooking” – the proteins in the fish are denatured, the method by which heat also cooks meat. Cooking is probably too simplified a term for this but I don’t think people would like to eat food described as “denatured.”

We slightly altered the recipe given with the instructional video to contain only fish – rather than fish and a seafood mix – and habanero peppers instead of the recommended Aji Limo peppers, because we couldn’t find those locally.

We doubled the recipe above and had plenty of ceviche to feed eight adults as part of an entree (appetiser, not the American entree, which is what everyone else calls the main meal).

Notes:

The red onion is high in fructans but if it sits in the dish for a few hours it will impart flavour without too much of a fructan load. If you are too sensitive for this, then please leave it out.

Garlic is also high in fructans – the 2 cloves of garlic in this recipe are okay for me, as they are spread out over 8 servings but you can replace the garlic with 2 tsp. garlic infused olive oil to get the taste without the fructans.

Peruvian Ceviche with Tilapia

1 lb Tilapia fillets

15 limes –> 1 cup fresh lime juice

3″ approx of a ginger root

2 cups red onion, sliced into Cs

4 tbsp habanero peppers, diced

1 tspn sea salt

1 tspn pepper

1 cup coriander leaves (cilantro), finely diced

2 cloves of garlic, omit if it is problematic and replace with 2 tsp. garlic infused olive oil

Mince your garlic and ginger by hand or in a food processor.

Squeeze the 15 limes and save the juice.

Dice the Tilapia fillets into bite-sized (1 x 2″) pieces. Place them in a casserole dish and pour in the lime juice, ensuring everything has an even covering. If you decide to use a seafood mix as well, replace a proportion of the fish with the mix and add it at this step. Let it sit in the fridge, “cooking,” for 30 minutes. Set a timer.

“Uncooked” Tilapia pieces

Remove the dish from the fridge and add the ginger/garlic. Stir it through thoroughly. The ginger will halt the denaturing process that the acidity of the lime juice began, thus the “cooking” will stop before you end up with a gluggy mess.

“Cooked” Tilapia, notice some of the juice has been soaked up

The ginger, garlic and coriander leaves have been added to stop the denaturing process

Add the diced peppers and coriander leaves and mix once more. Season with salt and pepper (optional) and top with the onion slices (which can be removed later on if they stir up your FM but the red onion does look pretty for serving) and keep it in the fridge, covered.

Chef Remy mentions that this can be stored in the fridge for up to 3 days but we only kept it for the next day, to be safe. Most of it was eaten, anyway.

To serve

1 yam, diced 1″ cubes (you could also use sweet potato)

1 potato, diced 1″ cubes

1 can of sweet corn, drained

Lightly oil the diced yams and bake at 180C/350F for about 45 minutes (or until cooked to your liking). Do the same with the potatoes.

We were not very sure what the traditional way of serving ceviche was, so we just made it up. It looked pretty to us, and it was very colourful, but it might be served a different way if you go elsewhere.

Basically, we piled the ceviche in the centre of a serving platter (making sure some red onion was visible on top) and surrounded it with the diced veggies. Couldn’t be simpler. And the colours make it look so appetising!

Our trial ceviche, with sweet corn and boiled potatoes – it tasted better as we ate, the flavours need a few hours at best to really mingle

The plated up ceviche – I love the mix of orange, yellow and purple from the onion

Please ignore the ugly tomato dish at the back – it tasted better than it looked, I swear!